So Sivits was given a one year sentance for his involvement in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal. One year? Sure, he was discharged from the armed forces and demoted, (which makes little sense anyway; why demote someone who is kicked out of the service in the first place?) but how can we say this is a fair punishment? You can get more than a year in prison for a whole multitude of crimes that don’t even come anywhere NEAR torturing captives. A DUI for example. How does this super light sentance not make us look even worse in the eyes of the world?
You can’t punish one guy for the actions of everyone involved, you can only punish him for what he did himself. Some people will get lighter sentences than others.
According to this article and others, the one year sentence was the maximum penalty. Sivits is also expected to testify against others.
The one year sentence and dishonorable discharge is the toughest punishment availble in a special court martial. Rumor has it that Sivits’ll turn states evidence in the upcoming general court martials. -Seems more like a skunk than a civet, still he’ll probably spread the legal equivalent of SARS amongst his comrades.
In this site here it states that:
A special court-martial may impose admonition, reprimand, restriction, extra duty, confinement for no more than six months, and forfeiture of two-thirds of a month’s pay for six months in all cases. In addition, enlisted members may be reduced to the lowest pay grade, and receive a bad-conduct discharge.
So it appears that a year is excessive punishment at that.
It also mentions that “A special court-martial is often characterized as a misdemeanor court.”
Torture is not even a felony charge under the UCMJ? I know that he was first to be charged, and that should make for a lighter charge, but still I’m irked. How is a year in prison supposed to look like justice to a culture that cuts off your hands for theft?
It’s my impression that Sivits’ involvement in the abuses was relatively minor. From [url=]The Guardian:
It seems that Sivits was rather a small fish in this, not one of the major perpetrators, and that he has been cooperative about giving testimony against others (which ought to make him real popular if he’s put in the same facility with anyone he helps put away).
And maybe I’m a sucker but I found this illuminating:
I think he genuinely feels remorse, that he was a low level soldier following orders and that he wasn’t getting any kicks out of what he was told to do. He should not have followed those orders but anyone who’s been in the military knows that standing up to miltary authority is a hard thing to do. It is pretty much ingrained in you not to ask questions and do what you’re told. You’re also taught not to follow illegal orders but sometimes it’s hard to be certain what constitutes an illegal order.
There are going to be a lot worse offenders than Sivits coming up for trials but I have a bad feeling that the very worst offenders, the ones who approved these policies and gave the orders will come away unscathed. Rummy is the one ultimately responsible for this. He made these kids do his dirty work and now he has no choice but to throw them under the bus for doing what he wanted them to do.
He pled guilty, expressed remorse, was a low man on the totempole, was not the guy giving the orders but rather the guy taking the pictures, is going to cooperate in nailing others. All these criteria, specially the last one, are used to allow suspects to cop pleas in civilian and military courts every day of the week.
Thus the charge he gets is relatively minor – and the sentence is as much as they can give for a minor charge (And BTW it’s demotion first, then discharge). Ryan, it would be advantageous to first find out what specific charge he was tried for, which in Sivits’ case is not “torture”. One of the things that we like to pretend makes us different from other systems is that we (allegedly) do not hold “Show Trials” in which we burn somebody just to make an example. Specially not to the standards of “a culture that cuts your hand off for theft”.
the most important testimony he is giving is that there were no systematic orders to brutalize the inmates coming down from military intell.
This is a pearl beyond price, and we may conjecture
(one minute…
[foil beanie on]
he will do the world’s easiest miltary time and retire with a cushy trust fund.
[foil beanie off]